Gabe (In the Company of Snipers, #8)(46)

“That’s another story, but this picture...” Kelsey placed another in Shelby’s hands. “This is my favorite.”

Shelby took the image carefully, a lone shot of Alex walking out of the blue Pacific ocean toward the picture taker, which had to be Kelsey, judging by the smirk on his handsome face. With his athletically sculpted body still wet from the surf behind him, he was the epitome of relaxed. Tan. Sexier than hell, and maybe a little bit hungry for the woman in his sights. Swimming trunks hung off his hips, adding to a truly delicious photo. A snorkel and mask hung off his fingers by a strap. The man definitely had his swagger on.

“That was at Hanama Bay. I was sunbathing—well, kind of. I had more fun watching him snorkel. I swear, the man isn’t afraid of anything. Alex can be such a tease. He walked straight out of the surf and didn’t stop until he spilled a scuba mask full of cold water all over me.” She rubbed her biceps. “We had so much fun acting like kids again.”

“You married a very handsome man,” Shelby said. “What a cute couple you two were.”

A shadow shifted over Kelsey’s face, and Shelby wanted to call the word back.

Were. Not are.

“The thing is...” Kelsey’s eyes brimmed, “. . . it doesn’t matter where he is, Shelby. Maybe he really is gone. Maybe I’ll even believe that someday. But Alex doesn’t have to be here in this room for me to feel him. Wherever he is, he’s thinking of me right now, and he’s loving me. Maybe that’s what I sense when I finally fall asleep. Maybe that’s why I can still feel the man who owns every beat of my heart, every breath I take. You’re young, but one day you’ll understand. When love comes to you, I hope your man will love you as deeply and as purely as I know my man loves me, wherever he is.”

She stilled, her fingers caressing the rugged face of her man in the photo. “Because there is only true love, Shelby. Once it springs to life, it cannot end. No one but you can kill it. There is no ‘he loved me.’ Only ‘he loves me.’ And I’ll love him until the day I die.”





Chapter Fourteen


Damn it. David again. He was fast becoming another Harley, only calmer. Methodical. And still barking up the wrong tree.

Mark clenched his jaw and hunkered down to listen to more logic. Once again, they were head-to-head in Alex’s office, out of earshot. David had come up with some damned convincing evidence that Alex might be alive, but try as he might, Mark knew better.


God, he wanted to believe in fairy tales. So what if the ME and the FBI were covering something up? So what if Sam Becker’s clever little bullet carried no heat signature? The FBI had funding. The damned round might have been a smart bullet. At the end of the day, none of these speculations mattered. Eyes don’t lie. They don’t. Maybe in a magic act in Vegas they did, but not in the damned morgue and cemetery.

David pursed his lips. “Let’s assume Alex is still alive.”

“So assume. What next?”

“I believe he’d do everything possible to contact us, don’t you?”

“At least he’d contact Kelsey,” Mark murmured, “and since she believes he rescued her, maybe he’s already been in touch with her. Is that where you’re headed?”

“Who else would’ve stayed with her those three days in a vacant home?”

“We’re assuming a lot here, but okay. He would’ve made sure she was safe before he left her.”

“He also took very good care of her. Like you would’ve done with Libby.”

“I guess,” Mark admitted.

“And he placed an anonymous call that directed us straight to her because he knew we’d protect her. He trusts us, Mark.”

This was a lot of guessing and assuming over a man with three holes in his chest, embalmed, and supposed to be six feet under, but okay. If David wanted to play guessing games, what the hell?

“If our first assumption is valid, why hasn’t Alex come out in the open?” David asked, still probing and still working on Mark’s last nerve.

Because he’s dead, Mark thought, but he played along and said, “I guess he would if he could.”

“Exactly.”

David was a lot like Mark, a behind-the-scenes kind of a man, steady and calm while others, like Alex and Harley, tended to overreact. Not David. He was the rock, not so much unemotional as extremely thoughtful and analytical.

He seemed the steadiest of the three senior agents, and Mark was grateful to have him. But the man was obsessed, and Mark couldn’t for the life of him understand why. It seemed he was fighting his team. Every last one of them.

“I’ve lain awake every night since it happened,” David continued. “I know Alex as well as you. He’s the sharpshooter we all want to be, but he’s also the best ghost out there. I’ve seen him at work. He can get into places the rest of us wouldn’t think of going and never be seen again. The man doesn’t even need a ghillie suit. He just evaporates into thin air.”

“But he’d never hurt Kelsey, David. If he isn’t dead, this bullshit game he’s playing is killing her. Hell, it’s killing all of us.”

“You’re right. He’d never hurt Kelsey or his team—if he could help it.”

“So you think maybe he can’t help it?”